Category Archives: Notebook

“Meantime, the pamphlets and half-sheets grow so upon our hands,” groaned Swift in 1710, “it will very well employ a man every day from morning til night to read them.” His solution? Never to open any! The doctor Thomas Beddoes … Continue reading →

Like Carman, the Honourable Sir Joseph Donaldson Cantley was from Manchester. But that was just about all they had in common. Far from having a rackety private life, Cantley was rumoured to have been a virgin until the age of … Continue reading →

“Independent film” brings to mind noble concepts like “integrity”, “vision”, “self-expression” and “sacrifice”. It evokes the image of struggling young filmmakers maxing out their credit cards to pay their actors and crews, who work long hours for little or no … Continue reading →

These were the days when announcers wore dinner jackets in the evenings, and he explains this practice: “In the evening most of the people of our sort did change into dinner jackets, if they weren’t wearing white ties and going … Continue reading →

Fortunately, given this dearth of administrative documents, we also have chronicles — again, mostly thanks to the diligence of monks. These contemporary histories can help put considerable amounts of flesh on what would otherwise be very bare bones, providing us … Continue reading →

I was twenty-five when, in 1956, I was formally inducted into MI5 as a junior officer… Spying on a decaying British Communist Party twenty-five thousand strong that had to be held together by MI5 informants did not meet my aspirations. … Continue reading →

The panicky listlessness that attends theatrical failure is an atmosphere that everyone within the walls of the theatre has no choice but to breathe, and worst affected, because most responsible was Ken Tynan… On my way to the theatre on … Continue reading →

I sit in the front of the car with Elke and doze as we listen to David Hasselhof songs on Bob! Radio (fuck me) and head to Potsdam for a live radio interview on the way to Berlin. At the … Continue reading →

We have a Committee meeting at which several representative Jews tell us of the extermination of their fellows by the Nazis. They have ringed off the Warsaw ghetto and transported two-thirds of the inhabitants in cattle-trucks to die in Russia. … Continue reading →